Shattered Dreams. (Johnny Hates Jazz, 1988)

Although the song has nothing to do with my topic for today, it does carry a personal meaning for me. To quote his song, I literally had “shattered dreams” last night. All because I allowed myself to continue brainstorming deep into the night for a piece for work the next day. Dreams so lucid, it felt so real, until now I am still in disbelief.

I dreamt that I was held down on the ground by two of my brothers, and shot in the neck at point-blank by my eldest brother in my own home. I don’t even have a brother, let alone three. Strange thing though, the chambers of the gun that was fired at me was empty. Why?

Maybe I should consider getting myself a dream catcher. As one of the most fascinating traditions of the Native Americans, the intention of a dream catcher is to protect a sleeping individual from negative dreams, while allowing the positive dreams to go through. The positive dreams would slip through the hole in the middle of the dream catcher and glide down the feathers to the sleeping person below. The negative dreams will get caught up in the web and expire when the first rays of the sun strike them.

“The dream catcher has been a part of the Native American culture and tradition for generations. An element of the Native American dream catcher relates to the tradition of the hoop. To some Native Americans of North America, the hoop is held in the highest esteem because it symbolizes strength and unity. Many symbols started around the hoop, and one of these symbols is the dream catcher.

The idea of the dream catcher caught on because the Native Americans believed that the night air is filled with dreams, both good and bad. With the dream catcher hanging over your bed or swinging freely in the air near your head, it catches your dreams as they flow by. The good dreams know how to pass through the dream catcher, slipping through the outer holes and sliding down the soft feathers ever so gently that many times, the sleeping individual does not know that he or she is dreaming. The bad dreams, however, would not know the way and end up tangled in the dream catcher, before perishing at dawn with the first light of the new day.

The dream catcher is made using a hoop of willow, and decorating it with findings, bits and pieces of every day life (such as feathers, arrowheads, beads, etc) which is believed to provide the dream catcher with the power to catch all of a person’s dreams, trapping the bad ones and letting the good ones go through.”